56 Dead In Iraq Violence Spike In

56 Dead in Iraq Violence Spike in Attacks on US Troops out of Anger over Israel

It’s Iraq, Stupid, concludes the Trib on the basis of a new Gallup poll that shows this subject is the number one concern of about a third of voters.

Two more US troops were killed by guerrillas in al-Anbar province, western Iraq, on Wednesday. 12 have been killed in since Thursday a week ago.. Iraqi guerrilla leaders are said to have found it much easier to recruit insurgents and gain support for direct attack on US troops because of Israel’s war on Lebanon. They have been able to do far more mortar attacks on US targets.

Has Ehud Olmert indirectly killed 12 US Marines and soldiers, and wounded many more, this week? I mean, while thousands of US and British troops were essentially hostage to the good will of millions of Iraqi Shiites all around them, was this really the appropriate time to launch a total war on Lebanese Shiites?

President Jalal Talabani seemed to say Wednesday that Iraq would take over security duties by the end of the year. His spokesman had to come out and say he didn’t really mean it. The statement caused a flurry in the Washington press corps, which takes Mam Jalal’s title too seriously and doesn’t seem to realize that he is sort of like Reagan was and you can’t take everything that comes out of his mouth very seriously.

In fact, there is no prospect of Iraqi government military and security forces getting a handle on the situation in most of the country unaided, and they aren’t even doing very well with massive aid.

Thousands of Shiites thronged the streets of Baghdad on Wednesday[Ar.], rallying against the Baathists they say are leading the Sunni Arab insurgency. The Financial Times says that many of the demonstrators were members of the Badr Corps or local protection committees, young men wearing civilian uniforms. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, addressed them, commending neighborhood-based security committees, which he said could defend residents of all religions and ethnicities. (This plan sounds to me suspiciously like the komitehs of revolutionary Iran, and over time they will likely become neighborhood-based militias and death squads).

Iraqi shopkeepers face shortages of wholesale goods, a thinning out of their customer base because of lack of security, and attacks on themselves because they are often of the wrong faith or ethnicit for their neighborhood.